The present invention relates to improvements in food products. In particular, the invention relates to protein-based products with enhanced flavor and reduced levels of fats and saturated oils.
Food technology in recent years has focused on providing high quality food products which are low in calorie content and low in cost. The public has become increasingly aware of the need to reduce fat intake from the diet. Lower fat foods, however, have tended to be rather bland and consumers, for the most part, have not been enthusiastic about such products due to their unappealing taste and texture.
One way to reduce the amount of fat in the diet is to avoid high fat meats. To this end, various efforts have been undertaken to reduce the fat content of meat products. Consumers have been increasing their consumption of leaner cuts of meat in order to reduce fat intake. Leaner cuts of meat, however, are costly and are not necessarily the most tasty. A certain amount of fat is thought to be needed during cooking to provide a tender and juicy product and customary mouthfeel.
Another suggestion to reduce the amount of fat in the diet has been to add materials such as carrageenan and/or soybean byproducts to meats. Consumers, however, have found such meat products to be lacking in taste, rather dry and generally undesirable. Thus, the public awaits more desirable alternatives.
Carbohydrates have always been a major component of the human diet. Sugars, in particular, have been used extensively as a food ingredient. Materials containing both simple sugars and polymers of saccharides have also been used as ingredients in food products. Food grade saccharides are available as mono-, di-, tri-, tetra-, pentasaccharides, oligomers, and as carbohydrates having a large number of monosaccharide molecules, e.g., greater than 10 monosaccharide units, which are known as polysaccharides.
Saccharide-based products can have varying degrees of low-monomer saccharides, or sugars, oligomers, and polysaccharides such as starch. Some saccharide-based products are prepared by hydrolysis of starch and are classified by the degree of starch polymer hydrolysis. The measuring unit is referred to as D.E. or dextrose equivalent. D.E. is defined as reducing sugars expressed as dextrose, and is reported as a percentage of the dry substance.
A saccharide-based product having high short-carbon-chain content, e.g., glucose and low-unit oligomers thereof, usually results in a higher dextrose equivalent, (D.E.). However, saccharide-based material having greater long-carbon-chain content, e.g., high monomer unit oligomers and polymers usually results in a lower D.E. rating.
Maltodextrins, for example, contain a mix of sugars and polysaccharides which range from long-chain oligomers resulting from starch hydrolysis to sugars having a low number of monomeric units. Under FDA guidelines, maltodextrin consists of non-sweet, nutritive saccharide polymers having a D.E. of less than 20. Corn syrup solids, regarded by the FDA as having a D.E. of greater than 20, is a similar polysaccharide-based product. The present inventor, however, refers to maltodextrins as including both such saccharide-based materials.
Maltodextrins have been used as a nonfat additive. One of the greatest advantages of maltodextrins is that they do not act adversely on the intestinal tract. Consequently, they are particularly useful as a bulking agent and as a fat substitute. Moreover, maltodextrins are generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by the United States Food and Drug Administration.
Thus, in view of the shortcomings associated with currently available low-fat food products, artisans still seek to make low-fat alternatives such as meat products and edible protein compositions more desirable to the consuming public. It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide reduced-fat food products which have the taste, texture and gustatory qualities of higher fat-containing products without the fat or its deleterious effects.
Other and further objects of the present invention will become apparent from the following description and its scope will be pointed out in the appended claims.